Art and theater reviews covering Seattle to Olympia, Washington, with other art, literature and personal commentary.
If you want to ask a question about any of the shows reviewed here please email the producing venue (theater or gallery) or email me at alec@alecclayton.com. If you post questions in the comment section the answer might get lost.

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Art galleries and
theaters being closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, I am forced by boredom
to review works in my own collection.

Becky Knold’s painting
“Veiled Distance” has been hanging on my living room wall for years. Recently,
I moved it to the bathroom where, to my surprise, I look at it much more often
and more thoroughly. I stare at it and find myself being drawn into its veiled
depths. (The title does not refer to social distancing and the wearing of masks;
it was painted and given that title long before the present horror.)

I have never asked the
artist about the media, but I assume from the appearance that it is acrylic on
paper, a heavy paper with a simulated canvas surface.

“Veiled Distance” is a
contemplative and mysterious painting. There are three flat black opaque shapes
floating on the surface, with a background of loosely brushed,
transparent, washes of watery paint in white, orange and pink. I italicize the
word background to indicate it is not really background but rather the
lively, atmospheric surface upon which and over and under which the black
shapes are painted. We’re seeing here mysterious organic shapes in space—outer
space or perhaps under water or wrapped in layers of transparent muslin, the
veil of the title. The spatial ambiguities are fascinating. At top there is a
circular shape that is only partially overlapped by the muslin veil, which
opens up to a deep hole in space through which a fiery sunset sky can be seen.
Below that is a heavy black shape that looks like something prehistoric. It
brings to mind the slung bone in the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odessey.
(Here’s a reminder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypEaGQb6dJk)
The third black shape is also bone-like. It stands upright on the shores of an
orange lake. This interpretation of abstract forms evoking water, sky and bone
are perhaps but one of many possible interpretations. I wish you could see it
in person, because a reproduction on a computer screen can’t possibly do it
justice.

"Riches Over Rags" mixed media on cardboard

"Cave Dweller" mixed media on cardboard

This is an early Becky
Knold painting, typical of many works she did in the early 2000s when she first
began painting fulltime after retiring from teaching. More recently she has
started experimenting with little collage paintings on cardboard and other
found materials. She has been posting photos of these on Facebook but has not
yet shown them in a gallery. I hope she will be able to post pandem.

The paintings on
cardboard are not atmospheric as the earlier works are, but have a kind of
solidity, or more specifically the appearance of solidity one might associate
with heavier materials. Many of these latest works appear heraldic like
medieval armaments, shields or coats of arms. And they are not constricted by
the traditional rectangular format of most paintings. Typically, there is a
standing vertical rectangular shape topped by a horizontal shape. The colors
are bolder than in her earlier paintings, and the paint tends to be heavier and
more opaque. There are strong contrasts between expressive marks and flat
shapes reminiscent of Adolph Gotlieb and Robert Motherwell.

Monday, March 30, 2020

Note: Publication of this
review did not happen as planned because of the corona virus pandemic.

Morris Graves, The Church at Index

Forgotten Stories: Northwest
Public Art of the 1930s is an exhibition of mostly unknown but historically
important art created under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration
in Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington during the Great Depression. Curator
Margaret Bullock spent decades pulling together this exhibition which fills two
of the largest galleries in Tacoma Art Museum with paintings, prints,
sculptures, and murals pulled from the walls of schools, libraries and post
offices. Also included are little-known early works by more well-known artists
such as Kenneth Callahan, Morris Graves and photographer Minor White.

During the Roosevelt presidency
hundreds of artists were employed by the WPA. They created thousands of works
of art even in the sparsely populated and remote Northwest, many of which have
since been lost or are located in small, out-of-the way towns where few people
see them, and those who do don’t know their significance. TAM’s exhibition
uncovers and re-introduces to the public hundreds of these forgotten works.

“TAM is fortunate to be able to
exhibit a number of works that have not been seen since their creation and also
to borrow several large-scale murals that normally never leave their permanent
locations in schools and post offices,” Bullock said.

The large murals were painted on
canvas and glued to walls in public buildings and have been carefully removed
and installed in the museum for this exhibition. Most of these works are from what
is generally thought of as American scene paintings, which glorify working
people and small town-life. Typical is Jacob Elshin’s “Miners at Work,” a
5-by-12-foot mural in the Renton, Washington Post Office. It depicts miners
hard at work mining coal in a dark and dirty mine shaft. Like so many figures
in American scene paintings, the figures appear anonymous, seen from the back
or in profile. They appear rounded as in bas relief. The painting is somber and
dark and quietly salutes cooperative work.

Also somber is Kenneth Callahan’s,
“Dock Scene from the mural cycle Men Who Work the Ships,” depicting men at work
on what looks more like girders of buildings than ship building. Like Elshin’s
miners, these workers are rounded figures with some bulbous areas of clothing
that bear little relation to reality. This painting is a far cry from the
energetic and spiritual abstract paintings Callahan became famous for later,
other than the angular structure of the beams, which lends dynamism to the
composition.

Another artist in the show who
later became famous is Morris Graves with his 1934 oil on canvas, “Church at
Index.” It is a strong painting of a small-town church with a bridge in the
foreground and odd gridwork in the sky. With hints at abstraction, this
painting is a harbinger of Graves’s later work.

Aimee Gorham, Solomon, wood marquetry

Aimee Gorham made many
large-scale decorative panels in wood marquetry for seven schools in Portland,
Oregon. The one in this show on loan from Portland Art Museum is called
“Solomon.” It is a flattened, icon-like figure of the wise man rendered in an
Egyptian style with a strong ray of light angling in from top right and many
subtle variations of wood tone and grain.

Dora Erickson, Dakota Hotel

The most eerily haunting
painting in the exhibition is Dora Erickson’s oil on canvas “Dakota Hotel,”
picturing a strange isolated hotel on an empty prairie with five lonely figures
sitting on a makeshift wooden porch. The sickly green building against a
star-filled night sky gives the image an otherworldly appearance.

The many works of art in this
exhibition epitomize an historic era and an approach to art making that played
an important role in American art in the first half of the 20th
century.

Forgotten Stories: Northwest
Public Art of the 1930s continues through Aug. 16.

Thursday, March 19, 2020

Note: This review was supposed to be published in The News Tribune, but since all area theaters have been shut down due to the coronavirus it will not be.

You might remember the 1985
movie of “A Chorus Line” with Michael Douglas as Zach the director.
You might have seen it on Broadway in the 1970s. Chances are you’ve forgotten
just how good it was. Tacoma Little Theatre is now giving local audiences a
chance to remember.

“A Chorus Line” is rarely performed by
community theaters for the simple reason that it is too hard to do. It requires
a large cast of beautiful young people (and one middle aged man) who can sing,
dance and act with knock-’em-dead skill and an incredibly talented director and
choreographer. TLT’s Eric Clausell is more than up to the challenge as both
director and choreographer. Add to that a fabulous set by Blake R. York and lighting
by Niclas Olson, and you’ve got a show worthy of another Broadway revival.

The set is an empty stage with a back wall of mirrors that rotate
to become a black wall and another set of mirrors that are brought onstage to
create five stunning reflections of Whitney Shafer in the most marvelous dance performance
of the night.

It’s a chorus cattle call with a stage crowded with dancers – some
veterans and others starry-eyed wannabees – filling every inch of the stage while
auditioning for a part in the chorus. But the director, Zach (Michael O’Hara) demands
more. He wants them to open up about their personal lives, which they reluctantly
do in sometimes tortured speeches and in song and dance.

Sheila (Heather Malroy), a jaded Broadway
veteran who acts like she’s bored with the whole thing, reveals a sad childhood
in which ballet was her only escape. She sings the haunting “At the Ballet” and
is joined by Bebe (Lisa Kelly) and Maggie (Cynthia Ryan) who also used dance as
an escape from a sad childhood.

A couple of the men come out as gay at a time
when coming out was much riskier than it is today and when internalized
homophobia was common.

Val (Melanie Gladstone) talks about how despite
being a great dancer she could never get cast because she was flat chested and,
in her estimation, ugly. So she had reconstructive surgery and became successful.
Her tale leads to the hilarious and sassy song-and-dance number “Dance:Ten; Looks:
Three” about her beautifully augmented body parts.

Cassie (Shafer), whose star
shone briefly on Broadway and then in Hollywood can no longer get cast in
anything and is reduced to begging for a job in the chorus, and in one of the
more poignant and dramatic scenes in the play it is revealed that she and Zach
have a troubled past together, which sheds light on why he is more demanding of
her than of any of the others in the audition. The scene with Zach and Cassie
arguing about their relationship while incongruously everyone else sings and
dances behind them is a bit sappy and unrealistic, but it leads to Shafer’s
wonderful solo dance.

Finally, Zach asks of all
the hopefuls why they want to be in the chorus and speaking for them all, Diana
(Keola Holt) sings the spellbinding “What I Did for Love” with a voice that is
wonderfully clear and bell-like.

The entire cast is
outstanding, each standing out as an individual while fitting in with the
chorus, and their interaction in movement, song and speech is like pieces of an
intricate moving jigsaw puzzle. This is a production that should not be missed.
It is recommended for ages 12 and older and has flashing light effects, adult
language and sexual suggestiveness.

Cancelled

Tacoma Little Theatre, 210 North I St., Tacoma,

UPDATED INFORMATION FROM TACOMA LITTLE THEATRE AS OF 3/13/2020

It is with a heavy heart that Tacoma Little Theatre is cancelling our shows through April 23, 2020. Based upon recommendations from the government, regional sources, and our board of directors, it is in the best interest for the health and safety of patrons, artists, staff, volunteers, students, and all who come through our doors, that all public performances and classes will be cancelled.

If you had purchased a ticket to A Chorus Line you will be contacted by the box office staff within the next few days. We will offer you the following ticketing options:

A voucher to be used for any mainstage production through June of 2021

You may generously choose to offer your ticket expense as a tax-deductible donation to TLT

One bright light in our day is that we are actively working with our production team to see if we can remount A Chorus Line after this crisis has passed.

Monday, March 9, 2020

A season of fierce
women’s soccer

By Alec Clayton

Published in the Weekly Volcano

Ensemble cast of "The Wolves". Photo credit: Tim Johnston

Despite being a
finalist for the Pulitzer Prize three years ago, Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves
is not well known, which is probably why more than half the seats at Lakewood
Playhouse were empty opening night. That’s also why community theaters are
reluctant to try new or little-known plays, and that’s a crying shame. They
should be rewarded, not shunned.

The Wolves is a uniquely structured play. Lakewood
Playhouse’s production takes place on an almost empty stage ― the only set
being artificial turf on the floor and a curtain at the back that serves as a
soccer goal. It is the story of a season of a high school girls’ indoor soccer
team, and it takes place on a series of Saturday practice sessions as the girls
talk about life, love, war, sex, soccer and each other while getting ready for
the next day’s game. As groups of people do in real life, they talk over each
other with often multiple conversations going at once, and their talk happens while
doing stretching exercises and kicking soccer balls and running around (in this
case off stage, stage right, out into the lobby and back in stage left).
Keeping up with the various conversations and story lines is challenging to the
audience since there are multiple, overlapping stories and not everything they
say is easy to hear. Pay close attention. But if you miss a few words here and
there, you’ll still be caught up in the action.

The first practice
session opens with one of the girls talking about the Khmer Rouge and their
murder of millions of people. Most of the team know nothing about the Khmer
Rouge. Another girl uses the word “retarded” and the team captain (Andreya Pro)
says “Don’t say the ‘R’ word.” And yet another girl makes a snide comment about
pregnancy and the others get upset because, as it is soon revealed, one of the
girls may have had an abortion. The goalkeeper suffers from anxiety and keeps
running off the field to vomit. A new girl joins the team, and there is mystery
about where she came from and why she plays so much better than the others. And
there is talk about wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is modern life as it is
lived and talked about by teenage girls, and it is as uncompromisingly realistic
as a play can get.

The Wolves is a true ensemble piece, with no stars
and every actor but for a soccer mom (Elain Weaver) who shows up only in one pivotal
scene. The girls do not even have names, but are listed in the program only by
the numbers on their uniforms. They are, in addition to Pro: Taylor Greig, Alyssa
Gries, Kaydance Rowden, Jasmine Smith, Courtney Rainer, Penelope Venturini, Mia
Emma Uhl, Sierra “Max” Margullis. All but Pro, a college graduate who has
performed with Tacoma Arts Live and Shakespeare Northwest, are students in high
school or college who have had relatively little stage experience other than
school performances, but each and every one act like professionals. They come together
as a team, and each actor plays her character as a unique person with distinct
character traits. The key is you can’t see them acting, not a one of them. They
are simply girls being girls, talking about the things girls talk about while
going through their paces on the soccer field. Through this process, they reveal
a story that includes a lot of humor and coming-of-age angst and ultimately
tragedy which they rise above due to their mutual support and strength of
character.

Every audience
member who is a parent of a teenage girl, or who has ever been a high school
girl or has known high school girls will recognize these fierce warriors, The
Wolves.

Congratulations
to Lakewood Playhouse, to Director Indeah Harris and this outstanding
all-female cast for a job well done in presenting this play.

It is not
recommended for young children. Tough subjects are discussed in language typical
of the characters portrayed.

The Wolves, 8 p.m.
Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, through March 22, $27.00, $243.00 Military and seniors,
$21.00 students and educators, pay what you can March 5, Lakewood Playhouse, 5729
Lakewood Towne Center Blvd. Lakewood, 253.588.0042,
lakewoodplayhouse.org.

Tuesday, March 3, 2020

I’ll let you in on a little secret. I like
Susan Christian a lot, and I have since first meeting her in 1988 or ’89, but I
have not always liked her art. In the early days of our acquaintance, what I saw
of her work was primarily variations on a scene of a single mountain viewed
from a distance across water. Just as Cezanne exhausted his view of Mont Sainte-Victoire, Susan exhausted her view of this mountain overlooking the Salish Sea.

Now, 30 years later, she is showing some of
those same pictures in the lobby of the State Theater in conjunction with their
performance of The Highest Tide, the play from the Jim Lynch novel
adapted for the stage by Jane Jones. And now I really love those pictures. The
pictures haven’t changed; my ability to see them has. Back then, I thought them
rather bland; now I see that they are deceptively simple―refreshingly and
boldly reductive, painted with a sure touch and depicting mystery, majesty and
barely contained energy.

In the many prints in the lobby, the
mountain hovers just as Mt. Rainier sometimes appears to hover above the
clouds. It stands at the horizon. It floats on the water or rises from the
water.

They are not all of the same mountain. There’s
one mono print called “Reading Your Dreams” that looks like a snow drift with a
couple of mountain-peak-shaped black lines and a blue sky filled with large
white dots―an abstract interpretation of the excitement of wind and cold while
skiing or snowboarding (possibly, up to the viewer to interpret).

Opening reception, photo by Lynette Charters Serembe

There are two larger pictures in the box
office. “Tripartite Oyster Bay” is a pastel depicting the deep blue waters of
Puget Sound as seen from either a deck or a pier overlooking the sound with a
mountain range in the distance. Susan lives on the water, and the scene is
probably from her home. The picture is divided by a central light section that
breaks the composition into three roughly equal sections with the pier jutting
out at harsh angles. The blue of the water is rich and glowing, and in the
section on the left looks like windowpanes between each section of the railing.
It is a beautiful and sparkling painting.

The other painting in the box office is a
large work in acrylic on canvas that was done specifically for this show. In a vast
field of dark and stormy blue a small group of jagged red, orange and lighter
blue marks create a concentrated explosion of something like lightning on the
water. This is the power and the majesty of Puget Sound made palpable in
abstract painting.

Although all but one of the artworks in this
show were done more than three decades ago and about 20 years before Lynch’s
book was published, they are the absolute perfect illustrations for the book
and play.

Susan Christian will give a talk in the lobby
following the Sunday matinee March 15. Free to everyone.

WHEN

When the box office is open,
noon to 6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and prior to performances, 1:30-2 p.m. Sunday and
7-7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday through March 21

Thursday, February 20, 2020

What an odd pairing: John James Audubon, the18th and 19th century artist famous
for precise drawings of birds and mammals, and RYAN! Fedderson, Native American
artist now living in Tacomaknown for contemporary interactive murals and mixed-media
art. What they have in common is respect for nature and concern over
humankind’s impact on the environment. But artistically they are as different
as a wolf and box of crayons.

Audubon is most famous for his multi-volume Birds of America series and slightly
lesser known for the series that followed, The
Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, a study of mammals, from which his
art in The
Naturalist & the Trickster at Tacoma Art
Museum is drawn.

“Juxtaposing
these two artists will present a very immersive and thought-provoking
experience regarding perceptions of the natural world and relationships between
humans and the environment,” says Faith Brower, TAM’s Haub Curator of

Western
American Art.

Audubon’s
precise illustrations of animals are important as nature studies, but as art
they are boring. There is little concern for composition. His colors, though
naturalistic, are dull. And what little emotion they depict seems
artificial.

Fedderson’s
work, by contrast, is vivacious and playful and colorful. The pièce de
résistance in this show is her 75-foot long interactive mural “Coyote Now
Epic,” which narrates the adventures of Coyote, known in many Native cultures
as The Trickster, a cunning prankster. In this narrative, which stretches wall-to-wall
and floor-to-ceiling, Coyote confronts the modern world with its rules and
regulations, its computers and its destruction of nature. It is a
comic-book-style mural with lyrical, flowing lines in black on white. And it is
interactive. Visitors are invited to color it with special crayons Fedderson
cast in the shape of coyote bones and which are displayed in and in front of a
crayon box. As displayed, the crayons have a pop-art flair. There are special
activity times set aside for coloring the mural: Thursday from 5-8 p.m., second
Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Earth Day, Sunday, April 19 from 10 a.m.
to 5 p.m.

When I visited the show, only small portions of the mural
had been colored, and I loved the interaction of the colored areas with vast expanses
of black and white. It should prove interesting to see how this changes over
time. I hope TAM will document the progress.

Feddersen
is also showing a number of glass vessels with images of Coyote and coyote
bones. These are elegant in shape and simple in design, with shiny primary
colors.

“Feddersen’s
engaging storytelling presents a contemporary perspective on the interactions
of humans, animals, and the natural world in humorous and compelling ways,”
Bower says.

Friday, February 14, 2020

David Mamet writes dialogue
in such a unique way that the way his characters talk has become known as Mamet
Speak. It is the way people actually talk, with stops and starts, lots of “ums
and uhs” and incomplete sentences – none of which works very well when other
playwrights attempt it, but lends burning realism to Mamet plays.

His intense and unsettling
two-person play “Oleanna,” now playing at Tacoma Arts Live’s Theater on the
Square, opens with college professor John having a one-side phone conversation
while his student Carol waits for him to get off the phone. He stammers and repeats
himself, paces the floor and keeps trying to signal Carol to wait, while she
struggles barely successfully to remain calm and patient. In this opening
scene, without Carol and the professor saying a word to each other, reams of
information are conveyed through their body language. This is writing and
acting of the highest order. Kudos to Angelica Barksdale as Carol and Sean Neely
as John.

From this opening, the two
feel each other out, circling like boxers with tentative jabs before trying to
land a knockout punch. The audience can sense the knockout punch is coming, and
it does, over and over, harder and harder, until Carol finally charges him with
sexual harassment, and John falls apart in a most spectacular fashion.

When “Oleanna” was first
performed in 1992, it was seen by some as a diatribe against “political
correctness,” and audiences went away arguing about who was right and who was wrong
– Carol or John. Heated talkbacks after performances became common and
eventually, Mamet weighed in saying theaters that produce the shows should not
allow for talkbacks with the cast and director. Today, after the Anita Hill/Justice
Clarence Thomas case and charges against Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein to
name a few, and the Me-Too movement, people may well view sexual harassment quite
differently. Still, “Oleanna” provides no clear answers. Both John and Carol
are manipulative, each has their own agenda, and each goes through many changes
in the course of their meetings in John’s office.

The set by Lex Marcos is a
beautiful and immaculately ordered university professor’s office with a large
desk, a small table, books on shelves and two posters on the walls, each
perfectly chosen for this production. One has the word harassment in
stark red letters and a list of harassing actions that will not be tolerated.
The other one is a quote from the poet Hafiz, “The words you speak become the
house you live in.”

“Oleanna” is
thought-provoking, intense and dark. The direction by Joshua Knudson and the
acting by Barksdale and Neely are excellent. I saw something opening night I
have never seen in my years as a reviewer. No one applauded at the end of the
first act, and for a long time no one got up to stretch their legs for go out
for concessions at intermission. I think they were too stunned by what they had
just witnessed on stage. This is not an easy play to watch, but it is a great
play.

Thursday, February 13, 2020

My wife, Gabi Clayton, makes art. For all the thirty some odd years that I was painting and exhibiting my paintings in galleries, hardly anybody even knew she was an artist too. She majored in art in college during her first two years, and then she switched her major to film with an emphasis on animation. In her freshman and sophomore drawing and design classes she made art that was surprisingly good―so unique, in fact, with a signature style recognizable from the start, that I’m not sure anybody recognized how good it was.

After graduating, she went to graduate school to become a mental health counselor, and she did graphic art―websites, brochures, etc., but for decades she never made art as “fine art” and she never attempted to get her art in galleries. Then a couple of years ago, she started creating art on her iPad and started posting a few of them on Facebook. And people liked them. They liked them a lot.

Most of Gabi’s art can be made into prints. They can also be printed on t-shirts, coffee cups and other consumer goods through a print-on-demand service she contracts with. She will have prints of a few of her recent work in our upcoming studio art sale. Plus, we will have many of the works on paper she did as an art student, which have rarely been shown publicly.

I will also have a lot of my paintings for sale with prices marked down as much as 50% and more from what I price them in galleries.

The art sale takes place at our home Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 22-23 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Contact us for the address.

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

The next art exhibition at Diana Fairbank's Oly Pop-UYp Gallery is a print show called Replication. Featured artists will be Lois Beck, Teri Bevelacqua and Faith Hagenhofer.

Lois Beck

Lois Beck came late to making art. After taking various community college courses for 30 years, she decided she wanted a degree, which she completed in 1996 with a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities. During her last quarter at The Evergreen State College, she took her first art class - printmaking.

She says, “My artwork explores the many fascinating processes of printmaking with my current focus being monoprint. My prints include woodcuts, etchings, linocuts, solar plates and rubber blocks as well as monoprints, with each technique producing a different result. Recently, I have become interested in collage and combining collage with my prints is producing exciting results.

“Creating art and making abstracts with color and motion bring me much wonder and satisfaction. Often I use several layers of ink and multiple passes through the press to achieve my nature abstracts. It is my hope that viewers of my work enjoy a private dialog with what they are seeing.”

Teri Bevelacqua

“I tend to react to the world around me and build my paintings from a universally personal journey. My painted collages are layers of images that play off of each other and mood. The images are like memories you think you have neatly tucked away; they emerge and fade in the strangest ways. Natural landscapes, urban landscapes and our man-made mess inspire me. Similar to riparian zones, zones between these places are fragile lines. The fragile lines also exist throughout our days as too many of us walk around this planet together. I find inspiration in those fragile lines in our physical world, our social world and the challenges we all face as we question the way we treat each other and our home planet.”

Faith Hagenhofer

Faith Hagenhofer has been a print maker for 35 years, working with linoleum block prints and almost exclusively in reduction. The pop-up show will offer a lot from her back catalog (mostly from the 1990's) and a few brand-new pieces! Her studio is in Tenino and she happily takes students to the craft, and visitors by appointment.

About the Show

This show spans the range of modern printmaking because:

Printmakers in our time are not constrained by the need to produce editions because any artwork can be reproduced digitally. So, prints and printed material tend to be conceived and worked as stand-alone productions much like paintings or mixed-media work. This gives printmakers the freedom to mix materials and different printmaking techniques while taking advantage of the surface quality and traditional vocabulary of printmaking.

Thursday, January 30, 2020

The student written and student performed musical Man Out
of Time will be performed this weekend only at Pacific Lutheran University.
A production three years in the making, Man Out of Time, is written
and produced by senior Gunnar Johnson, directed by Kylie Steves, with music
written by Gunnar Johnson, Megan Johnson, and Carl Johnson. The musical is the
story of Dr. Sherrie Amberson.

After being
hired at the secretive Finistech Institution, she discovers the journal of a
brilliant scientist who mysteriously vanished and was erased from all other
records. As she tries to piece together the narrative of the scientist's life,
it becomes evidently clear that no one can give her the full story. When the
Institution comes crashing down on her and her investigation, who will Sherrie
trust?

“When I began working on this show, I had no preconceived
ideas. However, when we began rehearsals, I was excited to see the actors take
their characters and make them come alive. It’s cliché, yes, but it’s true.
This show has never been produced before and for me, it’s been an amazing
experience. I will admit, that when I was asked to do this show, I was a little
concerned. I’ve only directed one other show and it was a lot shorter. However,
putting this show together over the last four weeks has been so much fun and
I’m grateful for the opportunity

Based on the hit 1980s dark comedy with Winona
Ryder and Christian Slater, “Heathers: The Musical” is certainly
dark, and there are a few funny lines, but it is not a funny play.

Lakewood Playhouse’s production is well acted,
with a large and talented cast of mostly youth actors who are relatively new to
South Sound stages, and there is good music. Both the film and the musical have
developed something of a cult following. The night I attended there were diehard
fans in the audience who knew the lyrics and sang along and clapped and stomped
their feet to the beat of the music – like a slightly less boisterous version
of a “Rocky Horror” audience. And many of them laughed at so-called punch lines
that were not only not funny but were vicious.

“Heathers” is a story of bullying, homophobia,
sexual harassment and assault, suicide and, ultimately, murder. No laughing
matter. To the writer and producers’ credit, the play makes a clear statement
to the effect that bigotry and bullying and homophobia are wrong, and it ends
on an uplifting note when the former bullies and their victims, including the
ghosts of the dead ones, come together in forgiveness and mutual support.

Also to their credit, writers, composers and lyricists
Laurence O’Keefe and Kevin Murphy replaced the original song, “Blue” with a boys-will-be-boys
message with the more sensitive “You’re Welcome” because they realized, as Director
Ashley Roy noted in the program, “Blue” “validated a toxic culture of male
entitlement and freedom from consequent while further dis-empowering their
female lead.”

Students at Westerburg High
School in Sherwood, Ohio are dominated by a trio of bullying mean girls,
all named Heather: Heather Chandler (Taylor Colvill), Heather McNamara (Juliet
Hollifield) and Heather Duke (Annelise Martin) and a duo of bullying football
players, Ram Sweeney (Austin Payne) and Henry Temple (Kurt Kelly). Their primary
targets are misfits Veronica Sawyer (Molly Quinn), J.D. Dean (Avery Horton) and
Martha Dunnstock (Christine Choate). Veronica and J.D. fight back with disastrous
consequences.

All the actors playing high schoolers are themselves
teenagers, except for the Heathers, who are in their twenties, and they all
display acting chops such as you’d expect from more experienced actors. The
only actors with longtime stage experience are Eric Strachan, who plays the
football coach, Lydia Jane, who plays two adult roles, and Kyle Murphy, who
plays Principal Gowan and a couple of dads. All of them turn in fine performances.
Quinn and Horton are truly outstanding, as is Colville as Heather Chandler.

The song “Freeze Your Brain” a tribute to, of all
places, Seven Eleven, featuring J.D. was one of the funnier and more enjoyable
songs, and “My Dead Gay Son” featuring Strachan and Murphy with the ensemble is
an uplifting celebration of love and acceptance.

Viewers should be aware that the play contains adult
language, simulated sex, gunshots and smoking of non-toxic prop cigarettes.
This play is not recommended for young children.

The house was sold out the night I attended, and considering
the cult nature of “Heathers,” it might be wise to get advanced tickets.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, through Feb. 9

WHERE: Lakewood Playhouse

TICKETS: $31.00, $29 military and seniors,
$26.00 students/educators), pay what you can Jan. 23

Thursday, January 23, 2020

“Monumental” (Ta-Nehisi Coates) by Robert Pruitt, courtesy of the artist and Koplin De Rio, Seattle / Adam Reich Photography

Iconic African-American men are saluted in
this traveling exhibition from the Smithsonian.
“We are honored and thrilled to feature Men of Change: Power, Triumph, Truth.
As of now, we’re one of only two museums on the West Coast that will host this
phenomenal exhibition (from the Smithsonian). We encourage everyone to come see
it and to learn about these change-makers,” says Washington State Historical
Society Director Jennifer Kilmer.

“These are some hard truths,” says Mary Mikel
Stump from the Historical Society.

Featured in the exhibition are portraits,
biographies and little-known stories about many of the most important Black men
in America’s history. These iconic figures are pictured with written words,
photographs and 29 original works of art made especially for this exhibition.
Included are boxer and activist Muhammad Ali, writer James Baldwin, writer
Ta-Nehisi Coats, political powerhouse W.E.B. Du Boise. The lives and works of famous
and the little-known men alike are highlighted. Such as historian Carter G.
Woodson and Black Panther writer and director Ryan Coogler; basketball star and
activist Lebron James; artist Romare Bearden and jazz greats Louis Armstrong
and Miles Davis; civil rights leader Andrew Young and comedian/activist Dick
Gregory; and one of America’s greatest playwrights, August Wilson, who made his
home in Seattle.

"Lost and Found (August Wilson) by Radcliffee Bailey, courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

"Romare Bearden" by Patrick Earl Hammie, courtesy of the artist

Visitors will be inspired and awed by these
towering men of history and will be enlightened by many little-known stories.
For instance, who knew that Bearden, admired for his daring art, was once a
baseball player? Before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball,
Bearden was given a chance to play in the majors — but with one stipulation:
being light skinned, he was asked to pass as white. He turned down that opportunity.

There is a wonderful painting of Bearden by
Patrick Earl Hammie, who breaks Bearden’s face into prismatic sections.

Basketballer Lebron James is depicted by
artist Shaun Leonardo by larger-than-life-size hands, not handling a basketball
but during a speech at the opening of his school.

Painter Robert Pruitt depicts Ta-Nehisi
Coates with a painting called “Monumental” which pictures not Coates but an
unidentified woman with a colorful map covering and hiding her head. Her dress
is antebellum, and the map outlines redlining for discriminatory housing
practices. “I have attempted to emulate Coates'
spirit of clarity through my approach and references to ideas of home, property
and architecture," Pruitt writes.

A museum
statement summarizes: “The exhibition weaves a collective tapestry of what it
is to be an African American man and the shared experience of African American
men across generations.”

Men of Change: Power, Triumph, Truth, 10 a.m.
to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. third Thursday, through March 15, $14,
$11 seniors, students, military, free to Washington State Historical Society
members and children younger than 5, Washington State History Museum, 1911
Pacific Avenue, Tacoma,www.WashingtonHistory.org

The verdict has long been
in: Noises Off is funny. New York Post critic Clive Barnes called it “the
funniest farce ever written,” and Frank Rich in The New York Times said it “is,
was, and probably always will be the funniest play written in my lifetime.”

For directors and actors, it
is one of the greatest challenges ever. It’s like a Marx Brothers movie with
nine Marx Brothers. Building the set and manipulating set changes, plus the
complicated pratfalls and complex choreographing of the movement throughout
would tax the best of actors and directors. Director Corey McDaniel and his
nine-person professional cast at Harlequin Productions is more than up to the
challenge.

An error prone theater
produces a comedy called Nothing On, and — no surprise here, this is the
oldest comic trope in the book — everything that can possibly go wrong does.
Doors won’t open or won’t stay closed, props get lost or misplaced, costumes
fall off, people trip, fall and constantly miss maiming each other by inches.
They swing axes, sit on plates of sardines, stuff sardines down their shirts,
and get stuck in the rear end with a cactus spines. Plus there is a plethora of
backstage romances involving much deception. Simultaneously, in another classic
comic trope, people go in and out of the multiple doors and windows, narrowly
missing each other.

One of the actors, Rich
Hawkins as Selsdon Mowbray is a drunk who plays an incompetent burgler who
keeps getting lost backstage and making his entrances at the wrong time. Yet it
turns out that Mowbray is the best actor in the play within a play, which
explains why the cast works so hard to keep him sober. Jason Haws plays Garry
Lejuene, an actor who argues constantly with the Nothing On director Lloyd
Dallas, played by Alexander Samuels. When Haws’ character is forced to adlib,
which is practically every line, he can never complete a sentence. Aaron Lamb’s
character keeps fainting at the most inappropriate moments and getting tripped
up and losing his pants.

In Act One the troop is in
the final dress rehearsal. The set is the living room of a country home. The
homeowners are away. The housekeeper, Dotty (Lisa Viertel) sets a plate of
sardines on an end table and answers the telephone and fights with the director
who corrects her when she drops props and forgets to hang up the phone or pick
up the newspaper or do whatever it is she’s supposed to do with the sardines. When
she’s out of the room, Garry, a real estate agent, comes in which a girlfriend,
Brooke (Rebecca Cort) with hanky-panky in mind.
Somehow Brooke loses her dress and spends most of the play running around in
her lingerie and striking ridicuous “sexy” poses — intentional over acting at
its absolute finest. Unfortunately, it is hard to understand some of what she
says due to the character’s accent and exaggerated histrionics.

In Act Two the set is turned
around, and we see what’s happening backstage during opening night at the
Grande Theatre. There are signs everywhere warning actors and crew to be quiet
when the play is underway, so what we see is mostly pantomime, whispers, and
fleeting glances through a window of the actors on stage as they perform for an
unseen audience - while actors, the director, stage hand and stage manager
fight with each other backstage. This is one of the most inventive things ever
in theater, a stroke of genius by writer Michael Frayn.

Act Three is the final
performance of Nothing On, and by then the cast and crew are at each
other’s throats and have been in and out of each other’s beds, and the play
within a play is absolutely delightful pandemonium.

Welcome!

I get paid for reviews in newspapers that I then post here, but I do many reviews and other articles that I don't get paid for. If you enjoyed reading them, please put something in the tip jar. Everything helps - thanks!

Subscribe to my blog

About Me

I am an artist and writer living in Olympia, Washington. I write an art review column, a theater review column and arts features for the Weekly Volcano, a community theater review column for The (Tacoma) News Tribune and regular arts features for OLY ARTS (Olympia).
My published novels are: This Is Me, Debbi, David; Tupelo; The Freedom Trilogy (a three-book series consisting of The Backside of Nowhere, Return to Freedom and Visual Liberties); Reunion at the Wetside; The Wives of Marty Winters; Imprudent Zeal and Until the Dawn. I've also published a book on art, As If Art Matters. All are available on amazon.com.
I grew up in Tupelo and Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and have been living in the Pacific Northwest since 1988 where I am active in many progressive organizations such as PFLAG (Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).